Having never made homemade donuts, I didn’t realize what a process it was when I idly suggested to M. on a Sunday morning, hey, let’s make donuts.

Although, my stepfather makes awesome bignets, and I know that’s an overnight process. So I shouldn’t have been too surprised to find, when I consulted the Joy of Cooking, a lengthy recipe for yeast donuts alongside beignets and fritters.

After realizing that donuts were not going to happen in time for even the latest brunch on Sunday, M and I fixed ourselves something else to eat and began mixing our donut dough.

After hours of rising, punching down, and rising again, we were finally ready to fry up some donuts.

Hoo boy, look at those babies go. Between the three of us (Roomie A. helped too), we had great designs of filling them with some fresh strawberry rhubarb filling. But honestly, the donuts didn’t stick around long enough for that.

We rolled some donut holes in sugar and Gryffon Ridge’s Persian Spice blend and glazed some of the donuts with a maple syrup and butter reduction.

After we’d all housed about 5 donuts each, we each retired to our rooms, the thought of filling donuts way beyond our abilities. In the morning (after two donuts for breakfast), I figured we’d each had our fill.

We used the remaining donuts to make bread pudding, with 4 eggs and 2 cups of whole milk- not for the faint of heart. All in all, a delicious, albiet time consuming, project!